1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to inspection equipment for a mouth section of a bottle can.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2011-126216, filed Jun. 6, 2011, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
A can having a bottle-shape of aluminum alloy in which a cap is screwed on a mouthpiece having a screw is known as a container filled with contents such as drinks. The can is manufactured by: forming an aluminum alloy sheet into a closed-end cylindrical body which has a bottom plate and a cylindrical side surface in one piece by performing drawing processing and ironing processing (i.e., DI forming); coating an inner surface and an outer surface of the close-ended cylindrical body; forming a shoulder and the mouthpiece by performing so-called neck-in processing on an opening portion; and performing screw-forming processing, curl-forming processing and the like on the mouthpiece.
An inner coating in the can is formed by thermo-setting resin such as epoxy-acrylic resin, polyester resin or the like in order to make corrosion resistance and so on to the can with respect to content of the can (refer to Patent Document 1). The inner coating is formed by spraying paint on an inner surface of the can after the drawing and ironing processing before the neck-in processing. However, the paint may scatter around or may cleave to the outer surface of the can and tiny protrusions are formed, so that the protrusions may preface with corrugations when the neck-in processing is performed.
A curl portion is formed by folding an upper end of the mouthpiece outward and the inner coating is formed an outer surface of the curl portion. The can is hermetically sealed by attaching a cap so as to press a liner to the curl portion (refer to Patent Document 2). Therefore, if asperity such as the aforementioned corrugations by the paint is formed on the surface of the curl portion, especially on a top surface, or deformation such as a pit is formed on the curl portion, the content may be leaked. However, there is a case in which the asperity is formed on the surface of the curl portion by the inner coating being crumpled when the mouth section and the curl portion are formed.
Therefore, it is important that the curl portion is not deformed and the asperity such as the corrugations and the like are not formed on the top surface of the curl portion. Furthermore, in case of the asperity is formed, it is expected that the asperity is detected in an inspection process and reliably excluded as a defective.
For example, as a detection method for detecting fine asperity (e.g., corrugation or the like) formed on the outer surface, a detection method in which a can-body is irradiated obliquely to a tangent plane (i.e., a plane along a tangent line of the outer surface) so that corrugations are detected by observing reflection or shade of the corrugations along the tangent plane is suggested (refer to Patent Document 3).